{"id":244,"date":"2003-12-02T13:06:46","date_gmt":"2003-12-02T18:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/12\/15_seconds\/"},"modified":"2003-12-02T13:06:46","modified_gmt":"2003-12-02T18:06:46","slug":"15_seconds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/12\/15_seconds\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Seconds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s all the police have to wait for you to answer your door before they break it down to execute a warrant, at least <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;cid=558&#038;e=2&#038;u=\/ap\/20031202\/ap_on_go_su_co\/scotus_police_searches\">when they&#8217;re searching for drugs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> His case gave the court the opportunity to clarify how long police must wait before breaking into a home to serve a warrant. The court ruled 9-0 that a 20 second delay was ample, because any longer would give drug suspects time to flush evidence down the toilet.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\n[Writing for the court, Justice David H. Souter said] while &#8220;this call is a close one, we think that after 15 or 20 seconds without a response, police could fairly suspect that cocaine would be gone if they were reticent any longer.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Given the facts of the case (the full decision is available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourtus.gov\/opinions\/03pdf\/02-473.pdf\">here<\/a>), this ruling seems reasonable.  However the opinion should have used stronger language to distinguish the rule here from non-exigent situations.  For instance, Justice Souter writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Police seeking a stolen piano may be able to spend more time to make sure they really need a battering ram.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i>May<\/i> be able to spend more time?  How about <i>must<\/i> spend more time?<br \/>\nAt any rate, if the police come to your home searching for drugs, you better hope you&#8217;re not stuck in the shower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/12\/15_seconds\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to 15 Seconds\"><p>That&#8217;s all the police have to wait for you to answer your door before they break it down to execute a warrant, at least when they&#8217;re searching for drugs: His case gave the court the opportunity to clarify how long police must wait before breaking into a home to serve a warrant. The court ruled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}